PAUL KRUGMAN: Conservatives Want 'To Push Us Back To 1894'

New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman believes the
conservative movement's "real goal" is to shift the entire
country's social policies back 120 years.

"Their real goal is to push us back to 1894 — not even
to 1924. So these are the stakes. This is really serious
stuff," he declared Thursday night. "Never forget just
how big this thing is."

The Nobel
Prize-winning economist sat down for a discussion
with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) at
CUNY's Graduate Center in
Manhattan. The two were pressed for
their take on the U.S. Supreme Court's
"Hobby Lobby" decision in June that ruled some "closely held"
corporations had the right
to deny insurance coverage for birth control.

Krugman,
needless to say, was no fan of the decision.
He argued
the "outrageous" and "insane" ruling was based on the flawed
premise that business owners could be shielded from certain
government regulations based on their individual religious
beliefs.

"We're telling
you you have to provide health insurance. So if we can do that,
we can say, 'Yeah, it has to be the standardized thing,'" he
said. "This is an insane thing.
And of course, where exactly doe the line end? ... How closely
held does a corporation have to be when it ceases to be a person?
I would say no corporation is a person
— no matter what, no employer. Your role as an
employer and your role as a person is not the same thing."

Krugman
pivoted to a larger point and said the ruling must be viewed
in the context of a "scary" conservative push on these sorts of
issues.

"[We] should
not be astonished to see this happening in
2014. The deep roots of what's
going on in our political system is much bigger and much
scarier. Of course, you have to have the political fight as you
do on individual issues. But we are fighting something that is
quite scary," he said.